Judge Walter T. Cox, who presided, was one of the ablest and most conscientious jurists who ever sat on the Supreme bench of the District. From personal attendance on the trial, I feel sure that the course pursued by him was the only one which could have given the jury a sure ground for dooming the assassin to death; and it was doubtless a realization of that fact which held in check the mob spirit that began to show itself at one stage and threatened to save the Government the trouble of putting up a gallows. The popular rancor against Guiteau was so strong that in order to get him safely into the Court House from the “black Maria” which brought him from the jail every morning, and to reverse the operation at the close of every day’s session, the vehicle was backed up within about twenty feet of one of the basement doors, and a double file of police, standing shoulder to shoulder with clubs drawn, made a narrow little lane through which he was rushed at a quickstep, his face blanched with terror, and his furtive eyes fixed on the earth. Another historical incident is associated with the old building, to which many attribute the final resolve of President Lincoln to issue his Emancipation Proclamation. I refer to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. A bill to this end, introduced by Henry Wilson in December, 1861, was hotly debated in Congress but finally passed, and was signed on April 16, 1862. Only loyal owners were to be paid for their slaves, and every applicant for compensation had to take an iron-clad oath of allegiance to the Government. The whole business was handled by a board of three commissioners, who employed for their assistance an experienced slave-dealer imported from Baltimore. They met in one of the court-rooms, and the dealer put the negroes through their paces just as he had been accustomed to in the heyday of his trade, making them dance to show their suppleness and bite various tough substances as a test of the soundness of their teeth. Many of the black men and women came into the room singing hosannas to glorify the dawn of freedom. The highest appraisement of any slave was seven hundred and eighty-eight dollars for a good blacksmith; the lowest was ten dollars and ninety-five cents for a baby. These were about half the prices which would have been brought but for the fact that only one million dollars was appropriated, whereas the total estimated value of the slaves paid for was nearer two million, and all payments had to be scaled accordingly.